Adventurer/Crafter Experience Pool, aka: The Main Problem

Greeting All,

Some people said that the wall of text I had before was unreadable, so in the interest of making something better, I have edited this post. At the bottom there is a spoiler containing the entire first post. It's long. You've been warned.

The Short Version:
Pros of the adventurer/crafter experience pools:

1. No levels (not a level based system).
2. The game is soloable (unlike an MMO).
3. Having a pool of experience is a good idea and a fairly unique one. I like it.
4. Impossible to max every skill, because of the decay system (so no player will ever be perfect at everything.

Cons of the adventurer/crafter experience pools:

1. From a roleplaying perspective, it doesn't make sense. How does killing things with a bow make it easier for me to learn fireballs?
2. Subterfuge and Taming (along with trees like this that might come later), don't really work with the current system. If you want to tame animals, you have to kill monsters.
3. To gain crafting experience, you have to gather resources. But the gathering skill and the production skill don't have to be the same. A miner/carpenter with no mining ability works fine.

Proposed solution: Tree Based Experience System. Each tree would have it's own experience pool that would go up based on the usage of the top skill in the tree. (Example: Using a sword would increase your skill with swords, and gain experience in the Swords Experience Pool).

All the pros stay the same from the previous system.

Things the new system would fix:

1. Makes sense from a roleplaying perspective (want to learn how to perform Whirling Blades? First you need to learn how to use a blade).
2. Subterfuge/Taming and anything else that would be added later would no longer be dependent on killing things. Animal Taming would increase the experience in the tree, so you can use it on other things for instance.
3. It would now be viable to be a pure blacksmith or a pure miner.

A couple of problems that have been brought up with the system, and proposed solutions:

1. Where would quest experience go? Remove it completely and replace it with either gold reward or an item specific reward based on the quest.
2. Tactics/Subterfuge/Focus/Armor skills would work slightly weird: You gain these skills by using the appropriate type of action (Magic to gain focus, Getting hit with armor to raise armor, etc...). This would stay the same, the only difference would be that you would also gain pool experience at the same time.
3. Magic skills: Many of the top tree magic skills become less and less viable as you reach higher level (Fire Fist for instance): To fix this, simply replace the very top of the tree of these with the "Attunement" of that tree, with the first skill of the tree being free to pick up (not requiring experience/gold). This way, the experience in the tree is based on your attunement, rather then a specific spell (like the combat tree).

This obviously would need some tweaks, but no system is perfect. The question is this:
Which do you think is better as a core idea: An Adventurer/Crafting Experience Pool (like we have now) or a Tree-Based Experience Pool?

Thanks for reading this,

JeffGo (William Carter/Scarlet Rose)

Quick Edit: Here's a post from about 8 months ago with a very similar concept, it's a good read: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-unified-solution-for-use-based-system.42868/

Spoiler: The original post

To start with, a little of a self introduction. My character up until final wipe was Scarlet Rose (my current character is William Carter). I don't have as much experience on the game as other people here (only 380 hours according to steam). However I do have one skill that many people on this forum don't have. I used to be a professional game tester. What I mean by this is that I worked at a company that specialized in video game testing. I would spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week testing video games. I'd prefer not have to discuss the difference between playing and testing a game as it has no relevance to this post, but simply that people acknowledge there is a difference.

The reason I haven't been posting many bugs is because I am not testing this game professionally, I am playing it for enjoyment. I try to keep the two things separate (work and play).

So then why am I posting in the feedback forum instead of the bug forum? As part of my job as a tester it was not only our job to find bugs, but to find issues that could spoil player experience (such as a huge difficulty spike, a boring side-story, etc..). And here is what I have to say:

The Adventurer/Crafter Experience Pool (from here on known as ACEP) is flawed.

Before I get a lot of hate about the previous statement, I'd like to say a few things. First, I know that this game is not going to use a level system, and that's fine. Second, I know how important the ACEP is to the developers, and I'm not asking them to remove it. Third, I know there are people who enjoy the ACEP, and in some way, I enjoy it as well.

The point of this long post will be to show not that the ACEP should be removed, but rather refined. We are at a stage in the game where changes like this can happen and will not have a huge impact on the final product (as opposed to waiting to release and then releasing a huge game changing patch like this). Most of the "damage" of the ACEP has already been done, and since we have already past final wipe, there is no reason that we can't change it.

To start my argument, let's begin with the positives of the ACEP:
1) Using ACEP, we avoid the leveling system entirely. The leveling system has it's own set of flaws, and it makes for a very different experience the Experience Based leveling system (like this game uses).
2) If someone is dedicated enough, they can theoretically solo the entire game. Unlike a traditional leveling based game, this game has no "level cap", and thus you can reach the point where you can solo even the hardest bosses.
3) The core idea of the ACEP is a good one. The idea of having a pool of experience that you build up, and then choose how to allocate it is, at it's core, a smart idea which I like. Since there is no traditional levels, using the speed at which your experience pool increases as a guide, you can see how quickly you progress (high level monsters give more experience then low level ones after all).
4) Because of the way the ACEP works, it pretty much guarantees that no one will ever be able to GM every skill in the game. Since there is no level cap, having skills decay over time when they aren't used ensures that it would likely be impossible to GM every skill (since high level skills decay faster, and so at some point even if you are killing the highest level monsters, you will need to use all that experience just to maintain your skill levels).

Now, with the problems of the ACEP system:
1) From a roleplaying perspective, it doesn't make sense. Richard Garriott has always believes that part of what makes his games great as it's immersive story, and SoTA is no exception. It's clear from the quests, the world, the NPC interactions that a lot of time and effort was put in to make the world as immersive as possible. And here is ACEP's first problem: It breaks immersion. Allow me to give an example. Suppose you were a master archer. One day you decide that you should have some way to defend yourself in close combat, incase an opponent ever reached melee ranged. One would expect you to start from scratch, training your sword on low level enemies, and slowly working your way up. However, using ACEP, there's a much easier way. Using your master archery skills, you kill high level monsters to gain Adventurer Experience. Once your pool has maxed out, you return to town and hit cows, chickens and pigs with a sword. Because of the current system, this is not only the fastest way, it's also the most viable. Since the amount of experience "consumed" by a skill is based on the amount of your experience in your pool, you gain the same amount of experience killing sheep at Swords 1 as you do as Swords 99. What this means if that there's no sense of "progression". You go out, kill things with a bow, return to town, kill animals, rinse and repeat until GM swords.
2) There are at least two adventurer skill trees that do not work with the current system: Taming and Subterfuge. Because the only current way to gain Adventurer Experience is by killing things, and these two trees don't revolve around killing, there is a disconnect. In order to learn how to tame or hide, you have to first learn how to kill. While I don't see a problem with also wanting to learn how to kill, it should not be required to learn how to pick someone's pocket.
3) Crafting Experience is a problem. Right now, if you want to become a blacksmith, you have to also gain a gathering skill. While it makes some amount of a sense for a roleplaying standpoint, it also doesn't make sense when viewed from a different standpoint, which is: I can become a master blacksmith and never have to mine. If the idea behind the current ACEP is to link Crafter skills to their base components, then it has failed to do so. Much like adventurer exp, there's no reason that you are required to combine mining and blacksmith, or any of the other "obvious" combinations. Mining would make it easier to raise blacksmithing (since you would have ores), but it's not required. You can just as easily focus on chopping down trees, and trade with your friend.


Obviously there are more positives and negatives, but I wanted to talk about the big issues. And what I think is a solution to every single problem raised, and it will still make everyone happy.

Dividing the experience pools into a per tree basis.

What this means is rather then having a "catch all" adventurer and crafter experience pool, each individual tree would have it's own experience pool (such as an Archery Experience Pool, a Fire Magic Experience Pool, etc..). Each tree has a "basic" skills, or the top skill in every tree. You would gain experience in that tree by using this basic skill (for passives like swords and archery, you'd gain it by using a sword or bow). Then you use the experience in your pool to decide which skills in the tree you'd gain. Aside from the basic skill, each skill in the tree would consume the tree experience (if it was used successfully). By doing this, it allows for the core idea of ACEP, and keeps all the positive things mentioned, but it removes almost all the negatives.

Let's go through the above positives and negatives in order:
Pros:
1) Avoiding the leveling system: Since we are still using experience pools, we still avoid that same leveling system. Nothing has changed in other words.
2) Soloing can still be done: Again, since the experience pool system is staying, it allows players to reach a point that they can still solo. The only thing that changes is the method in which they do it.
3) The core idea of ACEP remains: The idea of having to use the skills to gain experience, which then goes into a pool, which you can then use to level any skills you want remains.
4) Not being able to GM every skill: This remains, because skills will still decay if not used for a while. So if an archer focuses for a week on learning how to use a sword, of course he will be a bit rusty in his archery skills. However because he will now have archery experience pool, he can train his skill back up to his previous level faster (the expression: You never forget how to ride a bike comes to mind).

Cons:
1) Roleplaying: Here's the largest advantage of the tree based experience system (or TBES). If you want to learn how to resurrect the dead, you must first learn how to perform basic healing. To learn how to perform a flurry of sword strikes faster then the eye can track, you must first learn how to hold a sword. Using the TBES, even if you have already become a master archer, that has no bearing on your skill with a sword. You might have more combat experience from someone starting out, but that is shown in other ways. Namely, your health, strength, dexterity and focus. These will help people who have GM and have leveled these stats to speed up the process needed to GM other skills. So as per the previous example, the Master Archer has trained his body and thus has more health, which means when he is fighting monsters and still learning how to use a sword, he will be able to withstand more punishment then a "fresh" recruit (which makes sense).
2) Taming and Subterfuge: These are completely fixed using this new method (although it might require tweaking). If you want to learn how to pick pocket, it makes sense that first you have to learn about how to distract your target. If you want to learn how to tame animals, it makes sense that you learn by taming animals. These two skill trees (and any future trees in the same vein) now no longer require killing things to gain skill, which makes sense.
3) Crafting Experience: Using TBES, the crafting pool is seen in an entirely new way. Rather then forcing a player to go out gathering in order to become a better blacksmith, now the option is up to the player. He can choose to train his mining, in order to make the gathering of ore quicker for his blacksmithing. However he can just as easily have a friend who goes out and gather resources, bring them to him, who then uses it to make better equipment for the friend. Mutually beneficially relationship. Learning to mine will help the blacksmith, however it will no longer required to blacksmith. (To take this back to the roleplaying example, how many real life blacksmiths do you think also do their own mining?)

Now, obviously some tweaks will have to be made. But the TBES system is a more refined and balanced system at it' s core then the ACEP system... but why do I say balanced?

It's time to reveal the secret I used to GM taming in a mere three days two wipes ago. I've had many people accuse me of cheating or hacking. And now that I know I'm not the only one who used this method, I have no problem revealing it (especially since it's been a few weeks since final wipe). Here is the method I used.

I made friends.

It really was that simple, but I will elaborate so you can better understand how the TBES system helps here.
Step 1) Make friends. Not just any friends, but other people who had drive to become the best. Some of my friends had been the previous top players in the game before the wipe (Themo Lock and Cunning Stranger as two examples). I simply told them that I wanted to GM taming as quickly as possible and asked if I could join them when they went out killing. This allowed me to fill my adventurer experience pool quite quickly, since they were strong enough to handle killing things on their own, and all I had to do was provide the occasional heal and harvest corpses (since enemies respawn faster when their corpse is gone).
Step 2) The Silver: Here's one thing that a lot of people who want to GM taming quickly have problem understanding. I didn't gather my own silver. I made friends who planned on GMing blacksmith, who had to gather silver to gain Crafting Experience, and those friends then gave me the silver (expecting pets in return later). This was the source of my silver. Infact after three days (when I GMed taming), I still had not built a single one of my own collars. You heard that correctly, a GM tamer with 0 alchemy. That's because those same friends would make the collars, allowing them to raise their alchemy level, which would help in the long run for them.
Step 3* [I'll come back to this later, so remember it]) I stayed in the same zone as my friends from step 1, but didn't accompany them: I really began doing this once we reached deep ravenswood (after I had maxed out my adventurer exp pool, since I hadn't been leveling any skills). I would stand on a rock, which because of pathing issues, the wolves/spiders couldn't' get to and just started taming. I was starting at 0 taming, however because the amount of experience consumed by a skill doesn't have anything to do with success or failure, I could gain taming experience quickly. After all, the experience gained is based solely on the amount of your experience in your adventurer experience pool. Because my friends were still focusing on killing, and because I was still in the same zone, I'd still gain a portion of the experience from each monster they killed. This would allow me to keep my adventurer experience pool as high as possible.

And that's it. That's how I did it. The reason this is important is because as of the final wipe, I know I'm not the only one who used this method (infact, even at the speed I was going, there was someone who was a higher level tamer then me the entire time).

So what does all this have to do with the TBES/ACEP systems? Well, everything really. I could never have done this with the TBES system, with two very easy tweaks: Make skills only give experience on SUCCESSFUL attempts. This wouldn't just apply to taming, but to using any basic skills. Miss with a sword? No experience. Miss with a Bow? No experience. Etc. The second tweak is have the amount of experience gained per use of the skill be based on the level of the monster you are fighting. Because not all skills require killing the monster, by removing the experience from the actual kill of the monster from the equation, skills like Taming/Subterfuge would still work fine. What about the life tree? You are healing other players, and using the other player's level would be broken. The fix would be that the amount of experience gained by healing should be based on the PERCENTAGE of the life given. For example: If you heal a high level player with 600 HP for 5 hp, you'd gain a lot less experience then if you healed a low level player with only 100 hp. By doing this, it not only makes sense from a mechanical standpoint, but also a roleplaying one. What kind of experienced adventurer would take a complete novice healer into battle? But this also encourages another behavior: Helping new players. New players are the ones that will have a small amount of max hp, so it encourages high level players to seek out and assist low level players because it also helps them. Also note it should be the amount healed, not the amount that it "should have healed". So if someone is already at max life, and you heal them, you get 0 exp. This prevents players from sitting in town healing random people just to gain experience.

So, I think this post has gone on long enough. Please feel free to share what you think below.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

JeffGo (William Carter/Scarlet Rose)

 

I really can't get through your wall of text.

Of all the shroud systems, gaining skills through using them seems to be the one thing which works best.
One of the smartest things they did was have your skill go up through failing crafts. This makes sense, because success doesn't teach you anything.

Still there probably a dozen things I'd change about the system.

 

One can gain oodles of points by doing quests.

 

I read it all, and I must say it's a really great idea. Well thought, simple, plugs more holes than it creates. +1 absolutely.

One aspect, tho: where should go the XP you gain with quests? With ACEP, I know the answer. But with TBES?

 

Well, I read it because it is nearly identical to what I proposed 8 months ago, and for the same reasons. I will link it later when not on a phone. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-unified-solution-for-use-based-system.42868/

* separate pools per skill tree fixes many problems

There, I did the bullet point for you.
Please read this OP. It is written clearly and as concise as it can be to be thorough.
Katrina has the question that I could could not answer in my original post. I hope you can.

 

ok, but a larger presentation like this is much more received with bullet points up front, like I said a lot are just going to ignore it. Ill follow this up with an edit . . . .


Not a bad idea at all -

Looks like it could easily work .

Something the development team can take a look at but I fear much to complicated to try and implement now.

and again - bullet points will make the post much more attractive to other readers.

Since it is a viable idea, edit it to give a bottom line up front to catch the eye.

 

In your system, how do you determine which skill trees get experience added to the pool? You said by using the passive, but how does that work for Tactics/Subterfuge/Focus? How does it work for Heavy or Light armor? Currently I can raise Fire Proof just by having experience and getting hit by fireballs, how is it more immersive to have to grind that experience with Fire Fist? You're suggesting either an entire rework of the skill trees or an unintuitive system to fix something very minor.

 

Thank you all for the replies. I apologize for the wall of text, but I don't really know the functions on the forums and didn't know about the bulletpoint thing. I'll edit my original post to change things around after I post this.

To answer some of the questions that have come up:

• PrimeRib: TL;DR: Instead of having a giant pool of adventurer and crafting experience, each individual tree has it's own experience pool.

• Mugly Wumple: Yes and no. While there are quests that give a good amount of experience, simply doing quests is no a viable method. Also, many quests require going out and killing things, thus going against the original point.

• Katrina Bekers: This is actually the easiest problem to solve: Remove Quest Experience Rewards. Quest should still give rewards, but rather then just "you gain 1000 exp", you gain something appropriate to the quest. Example: Finish a quest to retrieve some herbs for an alchemist? Get some potions. Alternatively, you can just replace all experience rewards with gold rewards.

• GreyMouser Skye and Weins: I didn't actually know about that thread (there are a LOT of posts on this forums...), however I do like the layout of yours better. I'll modify mine to be more in line with it.

• Arlin: That's a fairly easy answer: The same way it does now. Tactics, Subterfuge, Focus and Armors all gain experience based on how much they are "used". Hit something with a sword? Gain some strength. Use a spell? Gain some focus. It would work the same with TBES, only instead of losing experience by raising the passive, you gain experience for the passive AND gain experience in the pool. For fire proof, you would still gain fire proof by getting hit with fireballs. However Fireproof is part of the Fire tree, which would mean you need to use fire fist to gain experience. The fix for this would be something along the lines of passives in the tree not consuming tree experience. So if you kill an enemy worth 1000 experience, 1000 experience would be added to the pool. However, if you also had 5 passives in that tree gaining experience, you would ALSO gain 200 exp per passive you had gaining experience (that would be a bonus on top of the experience put into the pool). This would allow you to get Fireproof up in the same method, but only train the active skills you want.

Like I said, I believe this is a better system, but every system has it's flaws. But at it's core, the TBES (Tree-Based Experienced System) would work a lot better then ACEP (Adventurer/Crafter Experience Pools).

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of editing to do. ^_^

(Also thanks for the quick replies, it's nice to know the community is so active for this game).

EDIT: The original post has been edited to be more readable. ^_^

 

I voted for your system, and post but I'd like to mention that there are issues too. One of the reasons the developers went with the current system is it's very difficult to cheat it. The reason the current system pools earned exp and then spends it, is because it is very difficult to create a skill based system that can't be gamed.

If people gain "healing" pool for healing others without having to kill they could jump off a hill and heal themselves in city or with a macro all day. If they gain fire magic for using fire fist each time it's used people will follow others around and just get a few shots on powerful targets. Every skill builder that you are suggesting for each tree would have to be meticulously examined and fixed for exploits.

With the current system, you get some strange benefits, like building an experience pool shooting arrows, and then training with it in swords, but you also get a system that is almost impossible to macro or cheat.

UO had a raise on skill use system and it didn't take long for people to find dozens of ways to game and exploit it.

In order to keep the exploits out of your system, you'd need to track all the ways in which something was attacked and if it dies, split it up among all the people in portions. You'd also need to monitor all the healing that takes place and split that experience too. That can get mind numbing to say the least.

The current system isn't perfect, but it follows one very important principle. The kiss principle. Keep it simple stupid.

 

I agree with you Danjacob, the system would need some fine tuning. Healing is really one of the exceptions to the rules (like Taming/Subterfuge are now). I will try to brainstorm some ideas at a later point, but right now my brain is dead. T_T

But as I said (both in my original post and in the edit), I do like the experience pool based system, it just seems like the one I proposed has less exploitable things about it.

Aside from healing, there is an easy fix for pretty much every other skill tree. The fix has a few steps:

1. Have skills only gain experience when you successfully perform the action. I realize that the expression "you learn more from failure then from success" can be used. But this would simply be to avoid exploiting (why bother attacking a stupid powerful monster your friend is tanking if you always miss and gain 0 exp from it?). This would also force players to fight monsters that are appropriately challenging of the skill tree they are going to use, thus making the experience they get from the tree independent of any other skills they have. (Even if you can tank a Lich Mage, if you can't hit him with your fire fist, you won't get anything from it).
2. Replace the top skill in each magic tree with the attunement for the tree and have the basic skill be free to train right underneath it. The tree for each magic tree would remain mostly the same, only instead of attunement being below the basic skill, it's above it. Using the basic skill would cost experience, but because you are using a skill of that tree, the attunement would go up, and thus the amount of experience in your pool would go up. Since skills require more and more experience to level up as you get higher, if you continuously killed low level things, you would level up slower and slower (much like it is now).
3. Have the amount of experience gained by independent of the monster actually dying. Skills gain experience from use, not from the monster actually dying. So depending on the level of the monster, you would get a certain amount of experience each time you used a skill on it. That way, even if you die while fighting a boss for instance, you would still have gained all the experience while you were using skills against it, rather then losing it all because you had died at the last second.

As you said, it's not perfect, no system is. But I think it's also less exploitable then the current one (*cough* GM Taming in 3 days *cough*). Although I will admit for the method I used, the only "exploit" was of the pathing system. I could have just as easily run back to town to tame cows and chickens and such and would have only been slightly slower.

Also, I heard a few people say it's "too late" to change the system. I'd like to point out that we are still technically in Pre-Alpha right now. We aren't even in Alpha, let alone Beta. Yes, we have just had final wipe, but we haven't even heard when the game is going to be released. It might be next month, it might be this Christmas, it might even be next year. This is in fact the right time to do this, since there's plenty of time to fix/fine tune things. Especially if they do what they have been doing with private testing to remove any obvious exploits.

There are going to be exploits in every system. There are exploits in the one currently used and in the one I proposed. A flawless system is impossible.

Finally, about the KISS system, my system is perhaps even easier then the current one. At it's core, here is the current system:
Kill monsters to gain experience -> Use said experience to train skills -> Use gained skills to kill monsters.

Here's the proposed system at it's core:
Use skills to gain experience -> Use experience to gain skills.

Sure it might sound more complicated, but really that's it.

 

The current system is actually working pretty good and I don't think your idea would make anything better. In fact, I think that it would only make it worse.

 

The current system works great for those who know how to game it, but it will cause frustration to those who learn this 'gaming' late in the ... well, er uh... game. [Dang, an Austin Powers moment].
There are many pluses to the current system. In my previous thread the goal was to improve what was already good and make it better through open discussion. I believe JeffGo has the same approach and I think the wall of text helps explain his position better. I ran into the "cricket sounds of the devs" so I let it drop, and that was long before persistence. But I really think this is an important thing to think through. And no, the first proposed solution will not be perfect which is the point of the discussion... to make it a more viable solution for the devs to consider.

 

I think your system would be a great improvement, however I don't agree with removing quest XP rewards. It would need to remain in an "unassigned" pool, similar to what happens now. As skills are used, points would flow into those pools at from the unassigned pool at a faster rate. So you get a 1500xp reward, then use stealth a dozen times or so, and it disbursed into the Subterfuge pool, so it can be applied. This way you get a bonus to what you want to advance, but normal gameplay will automatically distribute this appropriately.

 

Here's a TL;DR for "The full post": The current system has been done better by other games, and I'd like to help this game become better by focusing on it's uniqueness and what made the game this one is "Spiritually Based On" great.

(Quick aside: What is that actually called? When a game is loosely based on a previous title, it's a "Spiritual Successor", but what do you call the inverse? A "Spiritual Ancestor"? Not related to the post at all, just something I thought about.)

I actually really like the idea for an unassigned pool that quest experience can funnel into. Let's keep brainstorming. ^_^

Spoiler: The full post

The problem is that the idea behind the current system is good, the implementation is not. The thing about the current system is it rewards the modern day philosophy of "hack and slash".

What I mean by this is that pretty much every skill in the adventurer tree is based around killing monsters. All of the combat and most of the magic revolves around it, and the only ones that don't fit the current mold are Taming and Subterfuge.
The question that must be asked is: Will they ever make more skills that don't revolve around killing monsters?
If the answer is no, then I suppose the current system is fine. However if they do plan on adding more non-combat oriented skills, then the current system won't work. And depending on when they implement those skills, at that point it would be too late.

Currently the only viable way to gain adventurer experience is by killing monsters (And to those that say quests are viable, I would honestly be interested to see a character that could continuously get the experience needed to level without killing monsters as part of those quests). If this game is about killing monsters, then there's no problem with the current system.... except that there are other games which much better implemented systems similar to this.

But I'm not one to make claims without backing them up. For a system that focuses on killing monsters, with a very immersive story and a skill based progression, look no further then The Secret World. (by the way, this isn't an advertisement). Those who have played it can back me up on this one, but it had fast paced, action oriented combat; a very long list of skills and abilities; a great story that you felt involved in; etc..

Before the obvious reply of "If you like that game so much, why don't you play it?", you are missing the point. The point is that I believe that Shroud of the Avatar can be better then games like that. But not in the direction it's going.

I strongly believe that if this game attempts to compete against other Combat-Oriented games, it will lose.

For a very easy example of the same thing happening to someone in a similar situation, look at Mighty Number 9. Made by the original creator of Megaman, Mighty Number 9 was supposed to be a "Spiritual Successor" to Megaman. It had a hugely successful kickstarter, it promised to bring back that "old nostalgic feeling" from the megaman series. But what we got was a broken mess that tried to hard to "Update" itself with the times. It had the exact same things going for it that Shroud of the Avatar does now, and it failed because it was more focused on bringing an updated and "modern" feeling to it's old game series.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's compare the core similarities between Ultima Online and Shroud of the Avatar:

1. Both have been made with a lot of love from the developers
2. Both have deep stories and immersive gameplay
3. Both have/had (at the time) a very friendly and helpful community
4. Both have a wide variety of skills

Now for the differences:

1. Ultima Online is an MMO, Shroud of the Avatar is not. This has been stated repeatedly by the developers.
2. Ultima Online focused on training a skill through it's use, without needing to grind at all. Shroud of the Avatar requires a certain level of grinding in order to get the skills you want to the level you want.
3. Ultima Online knew what it was: An MMO with a story and fun/complex mechanics. Shroud of the Avatar is.... what exactly?

And here's I think where one of the problems lies. What exactly is Shroud of the Avatar? It's not an MMO, the developers were sure to make that clear. It's not a traditional multiplayer game, because you can also play online with 100s of strangers. It's not a single player game, because one of the biggest draws this game has is it's amazing community and playing single player misses that.

I'm not saying this as an insult to the developers, but as a serious question. Because before you can figure out what a game should have, you first need to decide what it is. And I think this is the core of the current Adventurer/Crafter Experience Pool problem. The current system wants to remind people of the old Ultima Online (saying this is skill based, not level based; it's a fantasy rpg world;etc..) but then it's trying to modernize itself (other games have experience bars, we should to; other MMO games focus on combat/crafting, we should to;etc..). It's heading in the exact same direction as Mighty Number 9.

Why am I bothering to write these huge essays of text? Because I'm worried about this game. I'm worried that this game is shooting itself in the foot and then asking people to pay for the medical bill.
The adventurer experience system is a good concept, but it is flawed in execution. It tries to take the concept behind ultima online, and modernize it to fit in better with a modern day audience. But that's not the target audience. The target audience are those that enjoyed Ultima Online and just want a 3D version of that, or heck, a better Ultima Online. This game rewards mindless grinding, killing monsters, and power leveling. All of which are only possible because of the current system. My proposed system is not perfect. I never claimed it was and I still don't believe it. But if the game continues down the road it is currently heading, it won't be long after the first official "Release" that they will realize the problem, and by then it will be too late.

I believe this game has potential. I believe it can be an amazing and unique experience. But if the core problems of the game aren't fixed now, in Pre-Alpha, when things like this should be solved, I expect another Mighty Number 9.

(One question for anyone who read that: I asked the question of "Is this game an MMO" in the 2015 summer telethon. Has their opinion on the game changed since then? If so, I apologize for the confusion).

And I'd like to ask a serious question for those that have followed this thread up to this point: Is the current system actually ok and I'm just overreacting? I realize that every system can be improved, but if the game released with the current system, do you think it would do alright? And as a follow up question, have they said what their primary source of income will be once the game has been released (full release I mean)? I'm honestly curious, because if this is an overreaction and they have a solid plan for stable income, then perhaps I just need a good nights sleep. ^_^

 

First I have to say that I really do appreciate your efforts to be both constructive and comprehensive.

I voted neither - I agree that the current system wouldn't be alright, and the proposed system certainly has merits, though also a lot of potential issues that may be difficult to address, and possibly even difficult to predict.

I would propose a more modest modification to the current system:

1. Keep the pools as they are (ACEP), however,
   
   
2. If the act of using a certain skill would be considered "productive", i.e. result in you gaining XP to your exp pool, or killing/hurting a monster, it would also increase the "learning affinity" of that pool, i.e. making that pool draw XP easier from your general pool - bit like what being in the company of a GM currently does, but for the entire tree.
   
   
3. Using a skill a lot in an unproductive way (like spamming a gustball) would result in decreased learning affinity for that tree.
   
   
4. Passive skills (like dex) would be handled similarly to 2) - for example you do something dexterity enchancing -> you improve the learning affinity of that tree

This would:

• be relatively simple to implement without too much reworking the existing system;
  
• provide another tuning knob for the developers;
  
• would balance the XP distribution so that you actually need to use the skills productively (for example, gaining XP with blunt weapons and using them on fine magery wouldn't be so feasible anymore);
• would still permit skill some skill carryover (a good thing in moderation IMO) in an easy way.

 

+1 to "I like the point, that you need XP by Quests, Adventures or Monsters to level"

.. instead of levelling by Macro only
.. I would even reduce the options to "not-train" skills, but this would induce a lot of whining from min_max_ers

 

If this game was not meant to be an MMO then why have a player based economy? My hopes for this game still pin on the SPOffline mode. As it stands I am completely turned off by the gathering, crafting, and decay systems as they are right now. The combat system lacks polish and is too complicated for the mouse based user. The skill system is too complex as well. By complex I don't mean there are too many skills I mean that the separation of XP from what generates it to what it is applied to - it makes no sense. Being unable to improve a skill that you are actively using because you are out of some pool is not intuitive. It is even worse for crafting as it focuses on gathering as if that is what really matters for making things.

 

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who has replied so far for only providing constructive criticism. I was worried this might have turned into a flame war between those that love it and those that don't. ^_^

In response to some of the responses:

• Helm) I think the main problem with this is that it only applies to gust balls, which would be an easy fix (just make it so gust balls don't give exp). Aside from those, what's considered "productive" is subjective. If I use a fireball to kill a sheep, would that be considered productive? What if I went to a low level area and killed a skeleton? I'm not opposed to the idea (as finding a definition for "productive" in this sense and applying it would be easier then implementing the TBES system), but first what exactly is productive must be clearly defined.

• Elfenwahn) I agree, but what I'd really like to see if more love for the non-combat players (tamers/subterfuge/crafters/anything that comes out in the future). There are many who have said you can gain good exp simply by doing quests, but so far I haven't seen anybody who's been able to get a steady stream of exp just by quests (and many quests do involve killing things in one form or another). As I said in one of my posts, I fear this game might be focusing too much on the "hack and slash" component, and not enough on other parts.

• Bluefire) I'd like to speak honestly. I don't think the SPOffline will be focused on that much by the Devs. Right now we haven't even heard anything from it, aside from the fact that since they are so sure it's going to be hacked anyways, they will just give players access to everything. As for the skill system, that's what we're here to discuss. I'd like to ask you to brainstorm some ideas that would help either improve the current system or a rework of the system that would make it more intuitive. The better an idea we can come up with, the more likely they are to implement it. ^_^

 

Thanks for the reply! I tried to elaborate my thoughts a little further, but it's a complex subject and I don't currently have time to clean it up. Regardless I'm putting what I have inside a spoiler so as to avoid hijacking your thread, and also because it is one of those notorious, fearsome-as-dragons "walls of text". Make of it what you will, hopefully there's at least some useful food for thought.

Spoiler: Some further random thoughts about learning affinity

Please bear with me if I'm being overly simplistic at times, or sound like stating the obvious -- I'm trying to state things as simply as I can so it's easy to understand for everyone.

Also please note that these ideas are expressed in "brainstorming spirit", i.e. not every detail is completely thought through, just some food for thought and something to possibly develop further.

Note also that I'm not addressing that much the issues 2) and 3) that you mentioned in the OP. Those two are important issues, but a bit of a separate matter, because the game still needs a lot of tuning of the XP sources -- I assume it's not done yet. Right now killing stuff is the only viable source - quests are currently not very relevant as a source except in the very beginning. The same applies to crafting and how it's rewarded XP-wise.

So I'm mostly trying to address the issue 1) in your post, the one where you asked "How does killing things with a bow make it easier for me to learn fireballs?".

I think this potential (mis)allocation of XP is one of the most glaring design shortcomings in this game currently - the XP source can really be something completely different than what it's spent on (like killing monsters -> taming monsters, or whacking monsters with bludgeons -> advancing high level moon magic).

To add insult to injury, the chunk of XP assigned from your pool to your skill is relatively static, depending on only a couple of variables -- mostly a) the size of the XP pool and b) the level of your skill. In other words, it currently does not matter whether you keep hitting gustballs, sheep or a dragons with that fireball: the amount of XP allocated is exactly the same in each case.

This is where the concept what I call "learning affinity" comes in. I define it as a skill tree specific factor that adjusts the amount of XP assigned from your pool to your skill as follows: A large learning affinity in a tree causes a larger chunk of XP to assigned to any advancing skill in that tree, a small learning affinity causes a smaller chunk to be assigned. Of course this is also relative to the amount determined by the other two variables described above. It could also be said that a grandmaster in your party provides a temporary boost to learning affinity for specific individual skill(s).

Numerically speaking, the learning affinity would provide a nonzero number ranging perhaps from 0.2 to 2.0 (20-200%), providing adjustment to the size of XP chunk to be allocated. Normally, if you earn everything using the same skill tree you put the XP into, everything is in balance, and the adjustment is close to 1.0 (no change, as 1.0 * X = X). If you do some moderate XP dumping to a different tree, the adjustment might sink to 0.7-0.8. Values approaching 0.2 (the rock bottom) could be achievable only with some serious gustball effort, when dumping XP earned in one tree to another.

How is learning affinity increased?

• Learning affinity concerns mostly skills and skill trees that earn XP. For those skills, learning affinity is increased primarily by "earning" "potential XP" for the skill tree. So learning affinity could even be numerically stored (in internal under-the-hood formulas) in the same units as XP. So if you earn 1150 XP by shooting an elder wolf with a bow, your Ranged tree (and Subterfuge tree, and possibly others) learning affinity scores increase by a corresponding amount (in certain proportions). Learning affinity might also be increased (slightly) by damage given, and (a little bit) perhaps even by failures, but the primary modifying factor is definitely XP earned.
• For active skills that do not earn XP, the situation is more complicated. In those cases, learning affinity might fluctuate much less than with active XP-earning skills, and therefore be much less relevant. The actual use of the skill would play a relatively bigger role (this would need to be tuned). It could increased by a fixed amount by each skill use and/or it could be time limited (for example Dash or Night Vision) and/or could be related to success (for example the amount healed could be a factor).
• For passive skills, that are not exercised directly, learning affinity would be some semi-fixed proportion of XP gained by the relevant active skill. The passive skill learning affinity would also fluctuate somewhat less than that of the active skills. Still, even with passives it would still be slightly less effective to, say, gain XP with bow and spend it to bludgeons (because strength and dexterity are in different trees, and the tree having strenght would not be improving its learning affinity with using the bow).

How is learning affinity decreased?

• Some of learning affinity is "consumed" when allocating skill points from your XP pool to your skill (the corresponding skill tree is affected). This is the primary means of adjusting it down.
• It could also decay a little bit with time (possibly at a similar rate as already learned skills do). Now before anyone starts to scream with panic and horror, let me remind you that it's simply adjustment factor, no XP is decayed from the XP pool. The decay rate could also be faster, so that the adjustment factor would be slowly moving towards 1.0.

Now let me give a concrete example what this might mean, by considering a couple of concrete scenarios.

1. Firstly, let's assume you have a lot of skills in the polearm tree - you kill stuff easily with halberds. You want to learn archery, so your idea is to gain a large XP pool with polearms, and then "dump" it to archery using a gustball or a training dummy.
   • Currently this can be done with no problem whatsoever. Just dump away.
   • With learning affinity adjustment, the learning affinity is already low to begin with, because you have never actually used your bow skills (except on gustball). Progress is slow, and will get slower still, as the archer skill level(s) increase, and skill affinity scores decrease.
2. Secondly, let's do the same thing but now the XP is gained using the bow. Let's also assume that the bow skills are kept locked to gain a large XP pool (a somewhat dumb thing to do, but let's assume this just for the sake of argument)

• Currently this can be done with no problem whatsoever. Just dump away.
• Learning affinity is kept in balance with the increase in skill levels (because you actually trained with the bow), at low levels progress would even speed up slightly, then even out with increasing levels.

​

 

Gustballs do not give experience.